Mallory Ringess's graduation from journeyman to pilot is upon him. He has sworn to discover the secrets of the Solid State Entity. Many of the greatest pilots in the Order's nearly three millennia history have been lost to the nebula where the Solid State Entity resides. Neverness is on the planet Icefall, which is located in the densest thickspace known, as it has billions of connections to the manifold. Faster-than-light travel is made possible through continually solving mathematical equations that allow for a one-to-one mapping between stars. However, there are mysteries far closer as well. The secrets of those who genetically engineered themselves to live a primitive life as Neanderthals may prove equally useful in determining the meaning of life and the secret to immortality.

Thematically, the closest book I've to read to this would be The God Emperor of Dune, though Wolfe's influence is also evident. The vast majority is philosophizing about metaphysics in some way or another. Primarily there are discussions and monologues about existential topics. Why does anything exist at all? Who am I? What is meaning? How ought life be lived? Does free will exist? What is the fate of humanity? Questions abound and most of the events of the book attempt to answer them. Each of the characters have their own answers and change according to them. I found the character development to be peculiar in that they struggle towards insight then have an epiphany or some extraordinary event occurs and they become rather different. This happens multiple times. It's sort of like if Kuhn's paradigm shift was applied to character development. There's also a lot of sex, a whole lot of sex. Quite possibly an absurd amount of sex, including incest, though it's mostly told rather than shown.

Although there eighty-six civilized human planets, a multitude of alien species, a considerable amount of space travel, and even space battles, I don't consider the focus of this to be the space opera. The focus is on experience. The Order wants it to be about quests that allow for a greater understanding of the manifold and the universe in general, but it turns out to be much more about self-discovery and coming into one's own. By the end, Mallory is much more than what he began as, in every way. The climax is detailing the proof to a mathematical theorem, that's the kind of book it is. It serves a functional purpose, but honestly they're more excited about having solved it.

I was amazed by the first quarter of the book and less so by the next quarter as it becomes a very different story, at least in terms of its setting. The third quarter goes the hardest on the metaphysics and the last quarter is the most action oriented, though it still has many digressions. I'm impressed that this was Zindell's debut novel and I will definitely read the rest of this series.